The stories brought back by Fairfax Media's reporter Michael Bachelard and photographer Kate Geraghty from two weeks in Iraq with survivors of Islamic State's rule are horrifying.
The worst of it? The atrocities, human rights abuses, fighting and despair are ongoing for hundreds of thousands of people caught in the areas still controlled by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and for millions more forced to flee their homes for their lives.
![Hussein Hatem, 10, from Mosul. He lives in a tent with his family at Khazer Camp 1, home to 38,000 displaced Iraqis who ...](/web/20170313010829im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/p/q/m/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gutdvx.png/1488964948935.jpg)
Who could forget the account of Hussein Hatem, a 10-year-old from an outer suburb of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul? He described how Islamic State fighters came to his primary school and knocked on the door of every classroom, requiring all the children to gather in the cement playground? There, they hacked off the head of his classmate singled out for apparently no reason.
Or 12-year-old Luma whose mother was shot before her eyes when they were caught trying to escape. Or Zahara Muhasen, a once prosperous, well-regarded woman reduced to begging. She weeps and sighs and wishes she were dead while telling how she was beaten for three days then dumped in Mosul 400 kilometres from her home after IS militants beheaded her policemen husband and two adult sons.
These are among the early accounts of the IS occupation of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and the largest urban centre controlled by IS in Iraq or Syria since a few thousand fighters defeated a government garrison of 60,000 to seize it in 2014. It was in Mosul that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called all Muslims to his so-called caliphate from the lectern at the al-Nuri mosque.
In January the Sunni militants were driven out of the eastern part of the city, which had been their stronghold, by an offensive which began in October. Now, in the offensive's second phase, some 650,000 civilians and an estimated 5000 IS fighters are essentially under seige from a 100,000-strong Iraqi coalition force supported by US air strikes.
Australia has deployed 780 defence personnel as part of the US-led coalition against IS in the Middle East, including special forces soldiers based within 50 kilometres of Mosul. A total of 19,000 Iraqi soldiers have gone through training at the Taji base near Baghdad, along with 1900 police, while the Australian Air Task Group is involved in air combat and support operations against IS.
More than 160,000 civilians have been displaced since the Mosul offensive began, and several thousand people have been killed or wounded. The battle is expected to be a long one because it's now in the old part of the city where close-packed buildings and narrow alleyways limit the use of tanks and armoured vehicles. Half of those still trapped in Mosul are children. They face a diabolical choice, as described by Save the Children: "Bombs, crossfire and hunger if they stay – or execution and snipers if they try to run". With some 50 air strikes a day, the horror of the bombardment for the civilians hiding in their cellars or under their stairs is scarcely imaginable.
Islamic State is losing ground in northern Syria too; Aleppo has been in government hands since December. Its territory, personnel and material resources are vastly diminished since the height of its power when it ruled over 5 million-plus people. The fall of Mosul, when it comes, will likely end the dream of the caliphate. But there will be no respite. If anything, the situation then becomes even more complex and dangerous, for the US and allies such as Australia, when the uneasy alliances formed against IS as the common enemy disintegrate.
A victory in Mosul means the government forces will have to deal with Kurdish fighters who have been part of the coalition but still want an independent Kurdish state in the north. It's even more complicated in Syria where the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Kurds and Turkey all lay claim to areas from which IS is retreating. There's a danger that US President Donald Trump's relationship with Russia will hinder rather than help the search for containment. At least common sense has prevailed in the omission of Iraq from the revised list of countries whose citizens are denied entry to the United States. It was reported that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis requested Iraq be left out because he feared its inclusion would hamper the co-ordinated effort to defeat Islamic State.